Cardiac Arrest, or Sudden Death, is a descriptor for a diverse collection of physiological abnormalities with a common cardiac etiology, wherein the patient typically presents with the symptoms of pulselessness, apnea and unconsciousness. Cardiac arrest is widespread, with an estimated 300,000 victims annually in the U.S. alone and a similar estimate of additional victims worldwide. Early defibrillation is the major factor in sudden cardiac arrest survival. There are, in fact, very few cases of cardiac arrest victims saved which were not treated with defibrillation. There are many different classes of abnormal electrocardiographic (ECG) rhythms, some of which are treatable with defibrillation and some of which are not. The standard terminology for this is “shockable” and “non-shockable” ECG rhythms, respectively. Non-shockable ECG rhythms are further classified into hemodynamically stable and hemodynamically unstable rhythms. Hemodynamically unstable rhythms are those which are incapable of supporting a patient's survival with adequate blood flow (non-viable). For example, a normal sinus rhythm is considered non-shockable and is hemodynamically stable (viable). Some common ECG rhythms encountered during cardiac arrest that are both non-shockable and hemodynamically unstable are: bradycardia, idioventricular rhythms, pulseless electrical activity (PEA) and asystole. Bradycardias, during which the heart beats too slowly, are non-shockable and also possibly non-viable. If the patient is unconscious during bradycardia, it can be helpful to perform chest compressions until pacing becomes available. Idioventricular rhythms, in which the electrical activity that initiates myocardial contraction occurs in the ventricles but not the atria, can also be non-shockable and non-viable (usually, electrical patterns begin in the atria). Idioventricular rhythms typically result in slow heart rhythms of 30 or 40 beats per minute, often causing the patient to lose consciousness. The slow heart rhythm occurs because the ventricles ordinarily respond to the activity of the atria, but when the atria stop their electrical activity, a slower, backup rhythm occurs in the ventricles. Pulseless Electrical Activity (PEA), the result of electro-mechanical dissociation (EMD), in which there is the presence of rhythmic electrical activity in the heart but the absence of myocardial contractility, is non-shockable and non-viable and would require chest compressions as a first response. Asystole, in which there is neither electrical nor mechanical activity in the heart, cannot be successfully treated with defibrillation, as is also the case for the other non-shockable, non-viable rhythms. Pacing is recommended for asystole, and there are other treatment modalities that an advanced life support team can perform to assist such patients, e.g. intubation and drugs. The primary examples of shockable rhythms that can be successfully treated with defibrillation are ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia, and ventricular flutter.
Normally, electrochemical activity within a human heart causes the organ's muscle fibers to contract and relax in a synchronized manner. This synchronized action of the heart's musculature results in the effective pumping of blood from the ventricles to the body's vital organs. In the case of ventricular fibrillation (VF), however, abnormal electrical activity within the heart causes the individual muscle fibers to contract in an unsynchronized and chaotic way. As a result of this loss of synchronization, the heart loses its ability to effectively pump blood. Defibrillators produce a large current pulse that disrupts the chaotic electrical activity of the heart associated with ventricular fibrillation and provides the heart's electrochemical system with the opportunity to re-synchronize itself. Once organized electrical activity is restored, synchronized muscle contractions usually follow, leading to the restoration of effective cardiac pumping.
With the first clinical use in humans described in 1956 by Dr. Paul Zoll, transthoracic defibrillation has become the primary therapy for cardiac arrest, ventricular tachycardia (VT), and atrial fibrillation (AF). Monophasic waveforms dominated until 1996, when the first biphasic waveform became available for clinical use. Actual survival-to-hospital-discharge rates remain an abysmal ten percent or less. Survival rates from cardiac arrest remain as low as 1-3% in major U.S. cities, including those with extensive, advanced pre-hospital medical care infrastructures.
The importance of good quality, deep compressions on improving survival has recently been rediscovered by the clinical community. The American Heart Association, in their most recent 2010 Guidelines, state, “The scientists and healthcare providers participating in a comprehensive evidence evaluation process analyzed the sequence and priorities of the steps of CPR in light of current scientific advances to identify factors with the greatest potential impact on survival. On the basis of the strength of the available evidence, they developed recommendations to support the interventions that showed the most promise. There was unanimous support for continued emphasis on high-quality CPR, with compressions of adequate rate and depth, allowing complete chest recoil, minimizing interruptions in chest compressions and avoiding excessive ventilation.”
In spite of the recommendations from the AHA and other recognized clinical bodies that good quality compressions with no pausing is important for cardiac arrest survival, compressions without pauses is actually very difficult to achieve, even with clinical use protocols that are specifically designed to achieve continuous compressions, with no ventilation pauses. It has been shown that CPR fraction, the percentage of time during the course of resuscitation during which compressions are present, is only 60-70% even for those systems which utilize the continuous compression approach to eliminate the ventilation pauses. The CPR fraction can be further increased to 80-85% when defibrillators are utilized that incorporate a motion sensor under the rescuers hands and provide real time feedback to the rescuer on the quality of their compressions (RealCPRHelp, ZOLL Medical, Chelmsford).
Devices for augmentation of circulation by pacing of asystole and bradycardia combined with defibrillation have been available for a number of years. U.S. Pat. No. 4,088,138 describes a device that automatically paces a patient either before or after a defibrillation shock when either profound bradycardia or asystole is detected.
Use of electrical stimulation of skeletal muscles to deliver blood flow similar to conventional sternal chest compressions during CPR has been described by Wang and colleagues in Crit Care Med 2008; 36[Suppl.]:S458-S466. As the authors note, however, the method is of limited value as skeletal muscle fatigue onset is fairly rapid, even under optimal lab conditions; fatigue onset was found to be less than one minute in most cases. It should be noted that a typical clinically advised interval for chest compressions is two minutes, thus efficacious stimulation will not reliably be achieved for even one full CPR interval. The technique is further elucidated, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,782,883, 6,185,457, 5,978,703, 6,314,319, and 6,567,607.
There are two primary mechanisms for generation of blood flow during chest compression in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR): the cardiac pump mechanism and the thoracic pump mechanism. “The cardiac pump hypothesis holds that blood flow is generated during closed-chest compressions when the heart is squeezed between the sternum and the vertebral column. This mechanism of flow implies that ventricular compression causes closure of the atrioventricular valves and that ejection of blood reduces ventricular volume. During chest relaxation, ventricular pressure falls below atrial pressure, allowing the atrioventricular valves to open and the ventricles to fill. This sequence of events resembles the normal cardiac cycle and occurs during cardiac compression when open-chest CPR is used.” [Peter Trinkaus, Charles L. Schleien, Physiologic Foundations of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, In: Bradley P. Fuhrman, MD, and Jerry J. Zimmerman, MD, PhD, Editor(s), Pediatric Critical Care (Third Edition), Mosby, Philadelphia, 2006, Pages 1795-1823, ISBN 978-0-32-301808-1, DOI: 10.1016/B978-032301808-1.50121-8.] Trinkaus goes on to say, “During normal cardiac function, the lowest pressure in the vascular circuit occurs on the atrial side of the atrioventricular valves. This low pressure compartment is the downstream pressure for the systemic circulation, which allows venous return to the heart. Angiographic studies show that blood passes from the venae cavae through the right heart into the pulmonary artery and from the pulmonary veins through the left heart into the aorta during a single chest compression. Echocardiographic studies show that, unlike normal cardiac activity or during open chest CPR, during closed-chest CPR in both dogs and humans the atrioventricular valves are open during blood ejection and aortic diameter decreases rather than increases during blood ejection. These findings during closed-chest CPR support the thoracic pump theory and argue that the heart is a passive conduit for blood flow.” (FIG. 1). In practice, the mechanism of blood flow generation during chest compressions is both cardiac and thoracic, with the relative proportion of effect being a function of the patient's individual vascular and valvular state as well as the performance parameters of the chest compression, particularly with regard to the depth, rate and release of the compression.
A typical patient will require approximately 100-200 pounds of force for the rescuer to compress the sternum to the recommended depth of 2 inches. The guidelines further recommend that the rate of compressions be at one compression every 600 milliseconds. During a normal resuscitation, as a result of this level of exertion, the rescuer responsible for performing chest compressions will fatigue from the effort even in as short a time as one minute. In response to the fatigue, the rescuer will respond by either switching roles with another rescuer, by pausing compressions, or by reducing their level of exertion which will inevitably result in insufficient compression effectiveness. In the case of switching rescuers, this procedure will result in pauses in compressions of at least 10 seconds and potentially 30 seconds if the action is performed inefficiently. During this period of pausing, the patient is of course not receiving the life-saving therapy of chest compressions, and no blood is being delivered to the heart, brain and other vital organs. It would thus be desirable to have an automatic means of delivering perfusion during periods of switching rescuers, periods of rescuer fatigue, pauses and other lapses in compression quality.
Attempts to use electrical stimulation for ventilation during CPR have also been described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,213,960 for electrostimulation in conjunction with a chest compression device and stimulation of nerves controlling ventilation. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,463,327 and 6,234,985 also describe the use diaphragmatic stimulation by the phrenic nerve in order to augment venous return and hemodynamics during CPR. The use of phrenic stimulation for cardiac arrest victims has not been found to be particularly effective for several reasons: 1) the patient has been anoxic for an extended period during cardiac arrest prior to treatment, resulting in degraded metabolic status of the whole nervous system, including the phrenic nerve, making electrostimulation much less effective than with conscious patients; 2) non-invasive locations for stimulation electrodes on the thorax also stimulate the intercostal muscles that cause exhalation, in direct opposition to the inspiratory effect caused by phrenic stimulation and its associated diaphragmatic contraction; and 3) while the phrenic nerve in the neck can be stimulated non-invasively, is often difficult to locate, particularly in the pre-hospital environment and under the acute, emergent situation of cardiac arrest.